Chapter Text
Bucky dreams.
He dreams of light—one headlight, a single solid cone stretching before him, cutting a vicious swath out of the dark. He hears the wind whipping past, feels the prickle of a mild winter chill, smells the threat of rain. He sees taillights materialize ahead, dull, red, throbbing beacons, uncommonly violent for such a quiet night. And he, another uncommonly violent thing, approaches those little red lights. Passes them. Strikes at the space in front of them—there’s something important there, something he needs to—to... something he needs. There’s a crash, too small and quiet for the gravity of the event. He grinds to a halt. Kills the lights.
Bucky dreams of ice. It’s on his skin, a greedy parasite leaching away his body heat. But it retreats; it’s on the window now, sweating in the wavering light of a nearby candle. The city outside is dark, muffled by night and a thick layer of snow—but inside, the room is bathed in honey. The couch cushions are on the floor, and Bucky lies on top of them, covered head-to-toe in a scratchy wool blanket. A slight form fidgets next to him. A sharp elbow digs into his back, shuddering so bad it starts both of them vibrating; he hears the breath rattling inside a cage of rickety ribs, the clackety-clack of teeth ineffectively clenched, and Bucky doesn’t know he’s moving until he’s already there, curled around a small, spindly candle flame. Something in his chest cracks in half, the sound of it so thunderous he’s sure the whole world can hear. A piece of him sloughs away, submerged, as the person in his arms settles finally into sleep.
Bucky dreams of metal, and he dreams of glass. He can feel gears digging their teeth into his soft pink fingertips, callouses blooming beneath the marks; he feels the slimy grit of oil on his hands, sees the way it stains his skin black—it’s oil, and then it’s gunpowder, too, and it burns, and the stench of it burrows into his nostrils, takes root in the back of his head. One blackened hand still smarts from striking the car window. Shards of glass turn the road into a map of the cosmos, glittering, horrifying, large, and the pain in his hand spreads, black clouds of it coiling up through his flesh arm, the bone breaking slowly, in reverse. His metal hand is curled in a fist, and the rusty smell of blood joins the gunpowder in lining Bucky’s throbbing skull. Bones shatter beneath that fist over and over again until finally, they’re bones he recognizes, the ribs no longer rickety, but still somehow fragile enough to fall to pieces in his hands. A pair of glassy blue eyes—
Bucky dreams of water. He dreams of the way the sunset fractures on the surface of the Hudson, the sky bleeding scarlet like an open wound—but it’s clean, and his eyes sting for it. He sees the bruises and the oozing, split skin he’s left on a familiar face, sees the confession gushing from blue eyes almost swollen shut, feels himself splitting open from the power of a shared memory. He sees the way his friend’s blood clouds the current of a different river, the way it mingles with the water fleeing his friend’s lungs when Bucky drops his body on the shore; Bucky can feel his own hand curled around this red-speckled throat a thousand times over, and his eyes sting for that, too. The water pulls his clothing tight across his skin, pulls his skin tight across his chest, and Bucky turns away, shivering, from the only warmth he’s ever known. A fine film of frost sprouts across his limbs, the water of the river crystallizing into a dense block in his stomach. The ice sinks its claws into the marrow of his bones, and he forgets what it is to be a moth around a flame.
Bucky dreams of light, of headlights, curling toward him. He watches them come, and he watches them go, the rumble of the car’s engine rising and falling like the snore of a slumbering beast. The beast remains asleep, and the car continues on its way, and it’s better. See? It’s better, because Bucky was never there.
*~*~*
Steve doesn’t dream.
He can’t stop himself from watching as Bucky goes into the ice again, his face so serene as the cryochamber fills with mist (and when was the last time this process was so peaceful?). Bucky’s eyes fall shut, and Steve’s stay wide open.
He sits in that room for a long time. Longer than even he realizes. Bucky goes under in the harsh light of high noon; by the time Steve comes up again, the sky outside is black, so black it’s almost turning gray, speckled with fading stars Steve can’t see. He makes out the vague outline of Bucky’s face, thrown into relief by the honey-colored lights of sleek, futuristic machines.
Bucky’s there. Right there. Steve can see him, and yet he can’t think of a time when he felt more alone.
Steve leaves that room, finally. He doesn’t quite remember doing it. He must find his way back to the residential level of the palace, though, because he wakes—again, surrounded by a harsh, hazy light, the jungle outside steaming beneath the full gaze of the midday sun—in a bed. His, he guesses. Comfortable, but cold, too.
T’Challa chalks Steve’s late start up to his exhaustion after the fight with Tony. Steve doesn’t correct him. The King of Wakanda treats Steve to a quiet but opulent breakfast. The coffee is the best Steve’s ever had. It feels like a handful of ashes in his mouth, but he smiles, says thank you, accepts another cup.
They plan a prison break. It’s T’Challa’s idea, but Steve leaps on board immediately—that’s one mistake, at least, that Steve has a chance to fix. The plans distract him. Not completely, but enough. He starts to feel pins and needles in the tips of his fingers and toes.
Before they go, Steve writes a letter. They’re about to cause Tony a lot of problems, after all—more than they’ve already caused, anyway—and the least he deserves is an explanation. As he’s handing the letter over to one of T’Challa’s staffers, Steve makes another decision, and before he can question it too much, he asks the staffer to procure a couple burner phones and send one with the letter. There are a lot of reasons to let this bridge burn, Steve knows, but he can’t quite bring himself to strike the match.
The operation is surprisingly simple. For Steve, it’s like falling back into his skin: his mind may be far away, but his body remembers well by now the best way to knock a guy out without making a sound. He lets his muscles take over while T’Challa handles all the complicated stuff, the transportation, the locks. He’s brought a handful of bodyguards along, a seamless team of silent women in the strangest, most efficient-looking stealth suits Steve has ever laid eyes on, and they come in handy when it turns out Wanda’s been put in a shock collar and straitjacket. She needs to be carried out of her cell.
Steve doesn’t know whether his tentative new ally can tell that he’s not really there. But he’s grateful for T’Challa’s help nonetheless.
Sam knows. He turns around at the sound of footsteps, and his expression is cold and hard right up until he sees who the footsteps belong to, and then his face cracks open on a brilliant smile. Steve smiles back, or tries to; he thinks he succeeds for an instant, but it falls quickly, and he knows Sam sees it as soon as it does.
Steve puts the shiny little explosive device on Sam’s door himself, blowing a tiny hole in the locking mechanism so Sam can push the door open. Another small explosion, and then a string of curses drifts toward them from the direction of Scott Lang’s cell, and Steve looks over, waits for Scott to stop jumping around and sucking on his now-injured finger. When Scott makes eye contact, Steve just nods, unable to put into words what it means to him that this relative stranger would go to prison for him. Clint, having been freed by one of T’Challa’s bodyguards, passes Steve and claps a hand on his shoulder—a solid gesture, a mark of loyalty. Steve tries not to buckle beneath its weight.
He forces himself to look at Wanda. Touches her arm gently when she goes by. Her eyes are slow to find his; her face is gaunt, her skin gray, her gaze hollow. She’s carried forward by the bodyguards, and Steve can’t tear his eyes away.
He walks out of the Raft prison shoulder-to-shoulder with Sam. Nobody says a word until they’re safely ensconced in T’Challa’s glassy jet, halfway back to Wakanda.
Steve’s seated in a far corner of the jet, watching from afar as a Wakandan medic scans Wanda head-to-toe with some kind of handheld device. Sam sits beside him, the proximity of his body heat an oblique comfort. Scott and Clint are a little ways off, the former looking around with the unabashed awe of a child, the latter watching, shaking his head, smiling faintly. T’Challa’s silhouette looms in the pilot’s seat, his steady hand resting on the throttle.
Steve can feel it when Sam resolves himself to speak. He braces himself.
“So,” Sam begins slowly. “Where’s Grumpy Cat?”
Steve swallows. “Bucky, uh. He went back under. Into cryofreeze.”
“Oh.”
Steve tries to smile, but it doesn’t work. He shrugs instead.
“He thought it’d be safer,” Steve explains.
“Right.”
Steve scrubs at an imaginary spot of dirt on his palm.
“Hey.” Sam nudges Steve’s arm with his elbow, and Steve looks up. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” says Steve immediately. “Yeah, Sam. I’m fine. I’m not the one who just got out of prison.”
Sam narrows his eyes, studies Steve’s face. “No offense, dude, but you look like shit. Were the other Winter Soldiers that bad?”
“Oh. Uh, no. They weren’t—it wasn’t them. It was, uh—”
“That, my friend, is the work of Tony Stark,” T’Challa interjects from the front of the jet. “It looked far worse yesterday.”
“Tony did this?” Sam is suddenly fuming. “Goddammit. God damn it. I told him, I fucking said—didn’t I fucking say that?—and he just went and—Jesus. Jesus. Steve. I’m so sorry. I gave you up, it was me, but he said he believed us, that he wanted to help—I’m sorry. I swear, if I’d known—”
“No, Sam, it’s—God. It’s not your fault. He—he was there to help. He just...” Steve falters. Scrubs a hand through his hair. Murmurs, “He had a good reason.”
Steve can see, out of the corner of his eye, the way Sam’s hand clenches into a fist. “I’ll kill him,” Sam breathes. “Jesus. I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Sam,” Steve pleads.
“What was the reason?”
The question startles Steve. He looks up—it was Clint who spoke. He’s watching Steve now from across the jet, waiting.
Steve opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. “It was... something Bucky did. Was made to do. A long time ago. He... It wasn’t something Tony could forgive.”
Clint’s brow furrows, and then, an instant later, clears. Recognition dawns on his face. He stares at Steve.
“...Fuck,” is all Clint seems able to say.
“What?” Scott looks back and forth between Steve and Clint. “What? What is it? What?”
“Steve, that asshole lied to me,” Sam presses. “He lied to me, and he betrayed you. What could possibly justify that?”
A bitter huff of laughter hisses from Steve’s lungs. “Tony’s not the traitor here, Sam.”
“What do you mean?”
Steve clenches his teeth, averts his eyes. Distantly, he feels an asthma he no longer suffers from sinking its claws into his throat.
“I mean...” He stops. Starts again. “Did you ever wonder exactly what happened to Tony’s parents?”
Sam looks thrown. “Uh, no? They died in a car crash, didn’t—”
He stops in his tracks. His eyes go wide. He just looks at Steve, and Steve looks back, feeling wretched.
“...Fuck,” Sam breathes.
“What? What am I missing?” Scott stage-whispers to Clint. Clint just gives him a look.
Sam asks Steve quietly, “Did you know?” Steve shuts his eyes against the words, a strangely protracted echo. He nods once.
The air whooshes past Steve’s face as Sam sits back, cursing under his breath.
“What is it?” Scott insists, none too quietly. There’s a rustle, a whisper, and then Scott says, “Oh. Oh. Fuck.”
“He would’ve killed him,” Steve finds himself whispering. “Tony. He would’ve killed him. He—he almost—”
The words fall apart in his mouth. Sam’s hand finds his shoulder and squeezes.
“Captain.”
It’s T’Challa’s voice again. Steve looks up; the King has handed the jet off to one of his bodyguards, and now crosses back toward Steve and Sam. He stops a few feet in front of them.
“Barnes is far from innocent,” T’Challa says, looking Steve right in the eye, “but neither is he entirely guilty. He did not deserve the fate Stark wished to visit upon him.”
Sam joins in. “Yeah, Steve, y’know, I still don’t really trust the guy, but I don’t think he deserves to be punished without a fair trial.”
“No,” Steve agrees. “No. He doesn’t.”
Sam jostles Steve with the hand still on his shoulder. “You did the right thing, protecting him,” he says.
T’Challa nods. “His mind is not his own. He needs time to make it so. Only then can we begin to determine guilt.”
The King steps closer, places a hand on Steve’s other shoulder.
“It is not a crime to save a friend,” says T’Challa gently.
Steve stares up at him just a second too long before nodding, breaking eye contact. T’Challa, seemingly satisfied, removes his hand from Steve’s shoulder and turns to check on Wanda and the medic.
Sam removes his hand, too, with one last companionable squeeze. “So, then, we need to find a way to make Grumpy Cat stop being grumpy, huh?”
“Yeah. Uh, the words—the trigger words, the ones Hydra put in his head. We need to get them out.”
“Great. And how exactly do we do that?”
Steve sighs. “I have no idea.”
After a frustrated beat, Sam turns to Clint, asks him if he has any special insights on brainwashing, and this sparks a group strategy session about possible tactics for scrubbing away Bucky’s trigger words. Steve phases out of the conversation, his mind drifting back to snow and ice.
He knows protecting Bucky was the right thing to do. He knows that. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life. And it’s that certainty that gives Steve pause: he remembers how quickly it slotted into place, how he had committed to fighting Tony even before Tony had fully committed to fighting him; he remembers how much emotion it stirred up in him, how much desperation, his protectiveness verging on animosity, on hatred; and he remembers just how far that hatred drove him. How hard he fought. How little he held back.
Steve knows protecting Bucky was the right thing to do. But he also feels the cold stone beneath his knees, the weight of the shield in his upraised hands; he sees again his one-time friend lying prostrate before him, unmasked, vulnerable, and he feels again, and again, and over and over, with chilling certainty, the truth.
Tony hadn’t been the only one prepared to kill.
*~*~*
Natasha turns up at the palace the next day. Or, more accurately, very, very late that night.
Steve wakes at the sound of Clint’s yelp (he may be bone-tired, but Steve never could sleep through a scream). He bounds the few feet to Clint’s room, Sam rushing in from the other direction, and they bust through the door just as T’Challa rounds the corner down the hall. At the sight that greets them, Steve relaxes immediately: her face is obscured, buried in Clint’s shoulder, but an unmistakable smudge of red hair peeks out of Clint’s heartfelt embrace.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” Clint’s mumbling into Natasha’s hair.
When her face does emerge, and Nat catches sight of her audience in the doorway, for an instant she appears acutely embarrassed. She recovers quickly, stepping away from Clint and creating a respectable distance between them, her face relaxing into a familiar supercilious blankness. The window hangs open behind them; Clint takes a moment to shut it.
“Mornin’, boys.” Nat snaps off a lazy salute.
“Oh, my god. You could at least wait for the sun to rise,” Sam bitches, though it’s clear in his voice he doesn’t really mean it. Steve can’t bring himself to speak.
“Is there something wrong with my front door?” Steve feels T’Challa looming quietly behind him and Sam in the doorway, his voice a soft rumble that nonetheless fills every corner of the room.
Returning T’Challa’s gaze over Steve’s shoulder, Nat shrugs. “Wasn’t sure if you’d still be mad at me after Leipzig.”
“Breaking and entering is a poor way to ask forgiveness,” remarks T’Challa mildly.
“I’ll take the fact that you haven’t thrown me back out the window as evidence that you’re over it.”
T’Challa hums his agreement. “With the wisdom of context, I can admit to some understanding of your position. But it is not a risk I would take again if I were you.”
Natasha nods, eyes sparkling with amusement. “Noted. Thank you, Your Highness.”
Clint pouts at her. “Hey, how come you didn’t ask for my forgiveness?”
Nat quirks an eyebrow. “Did I need to?”
“Well, no, but that’s not the point.”
“I kinda think it is.”
Nat’s laughing eyes land on Sam then. The laughter in them fades.
Her voice gentles as she asks, “How’s Wanda doing?”
Sam’s initial silence is telling. “Bad,” he says honestly. “They really did a number on her in there. But the doctors here are the best I’ve ever seen—it’ll take a little while, but she’ll pull through. Gonna need her friends when she wakes up.”
“We’ll be here,” says Steve, the words solid in his throat, grounding. It draws Nat’s attention to him.
Nat’s eyes are sharp, her gaze penetrating, and Steve resists the urge to flinch away from the intensity he finds there. Bypassing any comment on the yellowing bruises still gracing his face, or indeed any inquiry into his well-being, she asks knowingly, “How’s Barnes?”
Steve’s jaw tightens. “Fine,” he says. “Went back into cryo.”
She nods, like she already knew the answer to her question and was just waiting for Steve to confirm it. “I heard about Siberia,” she says, and stops there, but it’s still enough to make Steve’s throat tighten.
“Yeah,” is all he can say in return. He finally gives in and averts his gaze.
Natasha takes two quiet steps toward him, the red of her hair setting fire to the periphery of Steve’s vision. He looks up just enough so his eyes once again meet hers. Knows she can see too much there.
“Tony’s fine, too,” she murmurs. “A little worse for wear, but he’s not alone. He’ll be okay, Steve.”
Steve nods his head, eyes stinging.
A tiny, comforting smile, and then Natasha looks away, leaning down to pick something up off the floor. Holding it out to Steve, she says, “Little birdie told me you might want this.”
“Hey!” Sam barks. “Who you callin’ little?”
“Well I was referring to Redwing, but sure, you can be the little birdie if you want. All you had to do was ask nicely.”
“Now that’s just rude.”
Steve’s speechless again. He wraps stiff fingers around the backpack Nat holds out to him, lifts it gingerly, his breath caught short in a wave of unanticipated reverence. It’s such an innocuous thing. It looks just like any other backpack. But it’s not. Steve’s only seen it once before, but he’d know it anywhere.
“How’d you...?” Steve can’t finish the sentence. Can’t tear his eyes from the pack in his hands.
“Let’s just say I’ve got a friend who knew where to look,” says Nat. “Actually, you might know her—tall? Blonde? Gorgeous?”
Steve feels his face redden, an obscure tendril of guilt curling in his belly.
He sidesteps the quip, and the inquisitive edge in Natasha’s gaze, and tells her sincerely, “Thank you.”
She shrugs with one shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”
Clint moves then, stretches his arms high above his head, mouth gaping around a yawn. “Alright,” he says, the beginning of the word swelling around the end of the yawn as he lowers his arms again, “enough with the love-in. Happy though I am to see you, Nat, I need my beauty sleep.”
“Really? You think there’s any coming back from that mug?”
Clint clutches his chest, face crumpling in fake anguish. “That hurts, man.”
“Yeah, looks like it’s been hurting for a while.”
“Ouch.”
“I gotta agree with Birdman here,” says Sam. “Time for bed. Part two.”
“Who’re you callin’ Birdman, Birdman,” Clint mutters.
“The room across from this one is unoccupied,” T’Challa tells Nat.
“Lovely.” Natasha presses past Steve and into the hallway, and everyone but Clint follows. “Hey, Your Highness, tell me something—what’s it like having a cat and two birds under the same roof? Tense?”
Clint’s door slams pointedly behind them.
Natasha’s chuckling as she opens the door to the offered room. In the doorway, she swivels to face her entourage one more time.
“Goodnight, boys,” she says. Then her eyes land on Steve in particular as she adds, “Get some rest.”
“Oh, sure, you say that now,” gripes Sam as her door falls shut.
Sam claps a hand on Steve’s arm on his way back to his own room, looking significantly at Steve, but not saying anything. T’Challa offers them a cordial farewell. Steve returns both gestures numbly, fingers coiling unconsciously around the backpack in his hands.
In the solitude of Steve’s own borrowed bedroom, the silence is deafening. A few tense breaths after the door clicks shut, he looks down at his white knuckles, the precious object framed between them.
He won’t be getting any more rest tonight.
Steve doesn’t open it up immediately. Can hardly even look at it at first—he sits it on the desk chair, sits himself on the bed, and just stares at it from afar for a good twenty minutes, his mind reeling. He shouldn’t get his hopes up, he knows, but Steve thinks maybe this is it—everything, everything he’s wanted for the past two years, every answer to every question he could think to ask. Where was he? How was he? How much does he remember?
The only thing missing is the man himself. His warmth. His steady pulse. Those are far away. But maybe, Steve thinks, reckless, desperate, maybe something in this backpack can help bring Bucky back for good.
It’s this thought that spurs Steve forward. He grabs the backpack off the chair again and sinks to the floor with it, pretending like he’s still small enough to hide away from the world if he sidles up close enough to the bed. Fingers pinched white around the zipper, he pauses to will his heartbeat down. It still flutters noisily beside his throat when he moves again, but Steve can’t wait any longer, not for this. He spares a moment for a silent apology to the sleeping Bucky, unsure how he’d feel about the breach of privacy (unsure of where he stands with Bucky now, after everything)... but then the backpack is open, and every other thought flies from Steve’s head.
Notebooks. Four or five of them, leatherbound, all muted, unassuming colors, some with little sticky tabs protruding from between the pages. They’re buried beneath a few crumpled shirts, a pair of faded jeans, an envelope containing a small stack of Romanian leu; after pulling all of this out and arraying it painstakingly on the floor before him, Steve finds a handful of pens floating around at the bottom of the bag, at least eight distinct colors of ink between them. He lays the pens carefully beside the stack of notebooks, which he’s positioned front and center.
Steve stares around at it all, all the meager evidence of the last two years of Bucky’s life. His chest is so full and frenzied he’s reminded of the one time he went into anaphylactic shock. He lays a hand on the first notebook. Soaks in the smooth texture of the leather, worn with use. Swallows thickly. Picks it up.
The notebook falls open in Steve’s lap, the spine crackling. The page before him is a mess of colors and lines; there’s writing down both pages, big dense blocks of it in black ink, and filling up the margins, arcing between lines, darting between words, are countless arrows and doodles and extra notations in a slew of different colors. It looks just like Steve remembers Bucky’s English assignments used to look in school. He’s annotated his own memories like a Shakespeare play.
And they are Bucky’s memories. Steve can tell that much instantly. He runs his fingertips over the words as something slides home in his chest, and something else wrenches free.
I remember he used to get sick in the winter. Once upon a time, his lungs were just too weak to bear the cold, and he wouldn’t stop coughing all the way from September to March. It got real bad sometimes—there were times he couldn’t quite get a full breath, and he’d be lying on the couch all pathetic, and he’d look at me, and I’d see the panic in his eyes. He tried to bury it under all that stupid bravado, but turns out it’s kinda hard to stay stubborn when you’re coughing up blood. I stayed over most those nights. All of them, after his ma passed. I insisted. He’d kick up a fuss, but he always gave in eventually. I think we both knew how much he needed the company.
Jesus, the way his ma went, we were lucky he didn’t get TB. He would’ve gone with her.
Steve shuts his eyes against the stinging. Holds himself deathly still until he’s got his breathing under control again. God, but it sounds just like him. Just like he was.
He got so damn sick in the winter, but dammit if he didn’t love the snow. I guess I liked it, too. I liked the quiet. New York was never so quiet as when it snowed, like that beautiful insomniac of a city had finally fallen asleep for a while. He’d sit and sketch it if he felt good enough—god, how many pages of his sketchbooks were just the same old grubby streets covered in white? I remember once he told me he liked the light. He said it was like the snow took the light and held it, carried it around, and then threw it back into the world, and it made the streets look clear and full. He said he was always trying to capture that light with his pencil. Couldn’t quite get it. But then, my Stevie never did learn how to give up.
Steve snaps the book shut, hard, and rises to his feet.
Before he’s even fully made the decision to go, Steve’s swiftly but silently exiting his room, turning left down the hall. He foregoes the shiny elevator in favor of the shiny stairs, too antsy to consider standing still for even a few moments. He vaults up nine flights, and as he keys in his access code outside the door to the correct floor, the notebook slips around between his sweaty fingers—sweaty not from exertion, but from adrenaline. The indicator light on the door turns green, and he bursts none-too-quietly through, knowing there’s no one for him to wake on this floor.
Well, almost no one.
Steve careens down the hall and into the right room, barely stopping himself with a hand on the doorjamb. The sky outside is black, so black it’s almost turning gray, speckled with fading stars Steve can’t see. He makes out the vague outline of Bucky’s face, thrown into relief by the honey-colored lights of sleek, futuristic machines.
Bucky’s there. He’s right there.
Steve makes his way over to those machines, keying in the sequence T’Challa showed him (god, was it only days ago?). There’s a hiss as warm air fills the compartment, fogging the glass, obscuring Bucky’s face; the glass recedes, disappearing into a slot above Bucky’s head, and as Steve watches, Bucky’s eyes flutter open.
Lord almighty. Were his eyes always so blue?
Bucky swallows, visibly struggling with the maneuver. His gaze is foggy, too, but as it focuses on Steve, it starts to clear. Bucky’s brow furrows.
“...Steve?” The word is raked against the ragged surface of Bucky’s throat. Steve thinks he’s never heard anything so beautiful.
He jumps into action at the sound, stops by the sink set into a nearby wall, picks up a glass off the counter and fills it with water. He tucks the notebook under his arm and cradles the glass in his hands as he approaches his long-missed friend.
“Hey, Buck,” murmurs Steve, offering him the glass. “How’re you feeling?”
“Steve, what...” Bucky ignores the proffered water, eyes roaming wildly. He’s gone from confused to outright petrified in about five seconds.
Steve searches quickly for a place to set the glass down, settles it and the notebook on a little cart littered with expensive-looking instruments. He drags a nearby stool over to Bucky’s side, sits on it, and leans in quickly again, lays a hand on Bucky’s arm, steadying him.
“Hey, hey, you’re alright. Everything’s fine. Just breathe,” he tells Bucky, impressed with the clarity of his own voice. He has to consciously stop his hand from shaking where it connects with Bucky’s flesh, his warmth, his steady pulse. Steve’s breath comes to him a bit uneven.
Bucky does as Steve asks. He fixes his eye on a point directly ahead, no part of him moving except his chest, rising and falling at an ever slower rate. Steve’s gaze alights on the stump of Bucky’s left arm. He chokes down a wave of nauseous grief, guilt.
Interminable seconds later, when his breath has slowed to a veritable crawl, Bucky screws his eyes shut, lets his head thunk back against the padded cryobed.
“Why did you wake me?” he hisses, his face flickering between anger and terror and some kind of desperation. Steve squeezes his arm tighter.
“I, uh...” Steve falters, realizes he doesn’t have a good answer to this question. “I found your notebooks,” he says, gesturing to the one on the cart, maybe an answer, maybe a distraction.
Whatever it is, it works. Bucky opens his eyes again, flicks them over the notebook, then fixes them, hard, on Steve’s face.
Steve takes the obvious hint and keeps talking. “Natasha got here just a little while ago. Brought your backpack with her. I wasn’t sure... but, well, I. I couldn’t help it. I had to... to know. Something. Anything.”
He’s approaching the ledge. He feels it. He forces himself down from it.
“You may not have wanted me to look, and I’m sorry for that. I didn’t see much, if you’re... But I thought, I don’t know, maybe something in there can help us. To get rid of the words. I was just, I don’t know, looking for clues.”
Bucky blinks. “And you thought you’d find them in my backpack?” he asks, incredulous.
Steve ducks his head. “Sounds a little stupid, I guess. But it’s something, y’know? And I...” I need you back, he can’t say.
Bucky sighs, extracts his arm carefully from Steve’s grip. Steve tries not to feel hurt by his retreat.
“Listen, I guess I don’t... I don’t mind, if you look through them,” Bucky mumbles. “But I don’t want you getting your hopes up, okay? There may not...” He grimaces. “There may not be a cure.”
Steve just shakes his head, sits back. “I can’t think like that, Buck. I won’t. There’s gotta be a way to give you your life back, and I’m gonna find it.”
Bucky just stares at him, eyes wide and too-bright. He looks almost surprised, like he’d somehow forgotten what it was like to have a friend like Steve.
Steve can feel the personal challenge there, feels himself rising to meet it. He reaches out again and takes Bucky’s hand in both of his, grip firm.
“You never thought that way about me, right?” he tries. “You never gave up on me, not once, not even after the doctors told you there was no way I’d recover. Remember? They’d say it every January, like clockwork.”
Bucky’s face breaks into a small, surprised smile. He laughs softly. “Yeah. God, it was like they wanted you to kick the bucket.”
In the face of Bucky’s mirth, Steve can’t help his answering smile. “But you never let me,” he says, heart in his throat.
Bucky’s smile dims, and he shrugs. “Nah. You never let you. Stubborn Steve Rogers. You never went anywhere you didn’t want to go.”
Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand. “I couldn’t’ve stuck it to ‘em so many times without you,” he insists.
Bucky closes his eyes again, and the breath huffs, sharp, from his nose. It’s barely a laugh, barely happy, but Steve drinks it in. Bucky squeezes Steve’s hand right back, and he drinks that in, too. Drowns in the feeling.
The smile falls from Bucky’s face. His eyes open again, slowly, and the look he gives Steve is inscrutable.
“Listen... You look for your answers,” Bucky says, “but till you find ‘em, you gotta let me sleep. Okay? It’s not safe, me bein’ around you. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Steve’s jaw tightens, breath coming short. His hands tighten around Bucky’s.
“Okay,” he agrees, even though everything in him is screaming for him to say no.
Steve thinks Bucky can see some measure of his anguish on his face, because he pulls his hand from Steve’s grip and raises it, rubs the furrow from Steve’s brow with his thumb.
“You’ll be alright,” he tells Steve, fingertips tracing his jaw. “You’ll be alright without me.”
Bucky lets go, and Steve steps away. His hands punch in the freeze sequence without his telling them to, and Bucky gets that same relieved look on his face as he goes back under. The hiss of the cryochamber fades into silence, and Bucky’s voice reverberates in Steve’s head.
You’ll be alright without me.
Steve dumps the untouched glass of water, grips Bucky’s notebook, and leaves the room, knowing that he won’t be.